A book is meant not only to be read, but to haunt you, to importune you like a lover or a parent, to be in your teeth like a piece of gristle.

Aphorisms are bad for novels. They stick in the reader's teeth.

The contents of someone's bookcase are part of his history, like an ancestral portrait.

To be misunderstood can be the writer's punishment for having disturbed the reader's peace. The greater the disturbance, the greater the possibility of misunderstanding.

If a book is really good, it deserves to be read again, and if it's great, it should be read at least three times.

In an age like ours, which is not given to letter-writing, we forget what an important part it used to play in people's lives.

Rome was a poem pressed into service as a city.

The first divorce in the world may have been a tragedy, but the hundred-millionth is not necessarily one.

A bookcase is as good as a view, as much of a panorama as the sight of a city or a river. There are dawns and sunsets in books - storms and zephyrs.

There are few things more subtly distressing than an inappropriate gift from someone close to you.

The tension between 'yes' and no', between 'I can' and 'I cannot,' makes us feel that, in so many instances, human life is an interminable debate with one's self.

All's taken away: my love and my power.The body, thrown into city it hates, Finds no joy in the sunlight. With every hourThe blood grows colder in my veins.

An attitude of GRATITUDE, is life's most powerful affirmation

There is nothing in the world more pathetic than a bunch of wilted dandelions.

Furman astounded me with his chess depth, a depth which he revealed easily and naturally, as if all he were doing was establishing well-known truths.

The reward of art is not fame or success but intoxication.

Nothing tires a man more than to be grateful all the time.

Writing a story is kind of like surfing, as opposed to the novel, where you use a GPS to get somewhere. With surfing, you kind of jump.

When you do something that's going to speak to people, it's going to be because you're really allowing all of yourself to the table in an accepting way.

A well-prepared mind hopes in adversity and fears in prosperity. [Lat., Sperat infestis, metuit secundis Alteram sortem, bene preparatum Pectus.]

Human law cannot punish or forbid all evil, since while doing away with evils it would do away with many good things, which would hinder the advance of the common good.